The four tribes of big education

Published August 5, 2014

by Carter Wrenn, Talking About Politics, August 4, 2014.

The mention of the phrase ‘public schools’ conjures up a vision of nurturing teachers and faithful laboring principals but it turns out ‘Big Education’ is a kingdom teeming with ‘Big Players’ from teachers’ unions to textbook publishers to testing companies all battling for promotions, contracts and a bigger piece of the billions spent on public education – the warring camps fall into four tribes:

 

The Advocates for Social Justice are a tribe of dyed-in-the-wool multiculturalists tracing their genealogy back to a fearsome place: The 1960s Counter-Culture. They see our education system as the ill-bred progeny of capitalist exploitation, are determined to free the next generation from the shackles of our Western heritage and believe our public schools have a sacred duty to lead a crusade to cure the wrongs of social injustice.

 

The Human Potentials are against memorization, drill, rote learning, structure, discipline and routine.  This tribe believes open (and unstructured) classrooms are a step on the road to enlightenment and, more than anything else, believe schools must nurture students and build their self-esteem so they flower and fulfill their human potential. 

 

The Traditionalists favor all the things the Human Potentialists see as wicked: They’re for phonics, memorization, flash cards and teaching the virtues of Western Civilization.

 

The final group, the Structuralists, see our schools as antiquated. As an out of date monopoly. And an albatross. To them future lies in charter schools, vouchers, school choice and tuition tax credits. Their spiritual godfather is Milton Friedman.

 

‘Big Education,’ like big health care in Washington, turns out to be a swamp filled with special interests, so next time you see the teachers' union whacking a state legislator remember: You may really be watching a Structuralist slamming a Human Potentialist who’s trying to get his (or her) hands on more of ‘Big Education’s billions.

 

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August 5, 2014 at 8:37 am
Norm Kelly says:

Glad to see someone else getting on the bandwagon of throwing lib words right back at them.

Whenever libs want to disparage a company or business, they refer to them as 'big'. For instance, 'big oil'. As soon as a lib refers to some institution or group as 'big', we know it means that this organization is despised and the libs want the rest of us to despise them as well.

The other way to describe big education is to use the other favorite of libs, 'the education establishment'. This is also another way that libs disparage an organization or business.

Once again, the old adage of 'follow the money' applies to big education as well.

Who is trying to protect big education? The establishment folks, the union folks, those who make their living off big education. Even the pols who receive campaign funds from those in the education establishment are more inclined to protect & expand big education. Those who are interested in getting kids educated are more interested in providing CHOICE for families. It seems that the same can be said about Communist Core. Those who are interested in getting kids educated are against Communist Core. Those who support the education establishment seem to support Communist Core.

I say that we should all start referring to the education establishment at every opportunity as 'big education'. It's almost a guarantee that libs will be the first to complain about the use of this phrase. Kinda like when Nancy charged across the House floor - when you strike a nerve libs tend to get upset and defensive. Usually you only strike a lib nerve when you tell the truth about their actions and motives. Like referring to Obamascare as 'socialized medicine'. Gets their panties in a wad. Sometimes truth hurts. But it's always worth being truthful.

From now on the education establishment, commonly thought of as public education, should be referred to as 'big education'. Every where. Every time.

August 5, 2014 at 8:59 am
Richard Bunce says:

You forgot the biggest player... the government education industrial complex consisting of government education thinktank operators, government education bureaucrats, traditional government school administrators/teachers, college/university education department professors/officials, elected officials aligned with these groups. Their two primary goals are to increase taxpayer funding to traditional government school systems and thus to themselves and to kill any alternative to the traditional government school system.